Warhol's Ads, and the rich, vibrant array of colours that they present are an expression of the artist's mastery of colour and decades of exerience creating unique harmonies. The Ads series epitmises Warhol's defining importance within twentieth-century visual culture, focusing on imagery from the most powerful corporations in America at the time. Created in 1985, Warhol's series of ten trial proofs encapsulated some of the most ingenious marketing campaighns in advertising history and explored colour in more diverse ways than ever before.
If you are interested in adding to your collection, speak to one of our art consultants now - email us at info@halcyongallery.com
Trial proofs, denoted by the abbreviation 'TP', are typically created early in the printing process as a method of experimenting with different colour combinations and compositions. From 1980 until his death in 1987, Andy Warhol started to sell these trial proofs alongside regular editions as unique works which offer an insight into his process and exemplify his mastery of colour.
This trial proof portfolio of Ads is testament to Warhol's restless creativity, demonstrating a freer and more expressive quality than his final proofs. The process of screen printing is particularly well suited to experimentation: to test out colourways, Warhol would reuse the silkscreen stencil repeatedly with various combinations of coloured inks. These works are evidence of how Warhol honed his skill as a colourist, offering him the opportunity to be more daring in his choice of colour and to play with the possibilities of the medium.
Warhol's transformation of familiar products into works of art developed from his artistic origins as an illustrator for fashion brands and magazines. Ads marks Warhol coming full circle, returning to his artistic roots. After graduating in 1949 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology with a degree in Pictorial Design, Warhol moved to New York to pursue a career as a commercial artist. He experienced much success in the field of illustration, with his designs being featured in major publications such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. However, by the 1960s he began to transform the imagery of everyday products into works of art in their own right. His breakthrough exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962 consisted of 32 paintings of Campbell's Soup Cans, marking his transition into the realm of contemporary art.
The appropriation of striking logos and the familiar visual language of advertising recalls Warhol's earlier iconic works depicting Brillo boxes, Campbell's Soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles. His cultivation of a distinctive personal brand and the rise of Pop art were a reaction to the dominant artistic movement of the time: Abstract Expressionism, which focused on spontaneous gestures and an expressive approach to painting. By appropriating and repeating the imagery of everyday products, the Ads series elevated the ubiquitous advertising material of the twentieth century into vibrant works of art.
Warhol aspired for his artwork to be a 'statement of the symbols of the harsh, impersonal products and brash materialistic objects on which America is built today.' The grid formation of Lifesavers recalls his early career in advertising, echoing the use of repetition in his silkscreen paintings from the 1960s. Here, the candy-colour rendering and playful aspect of the composition speaks to the importance of colour in creating eye-catching advertisements, or, in Warhol's case, artworks.
Some of the key symbols in these iconic advertising campaigns have shaped the collective consciousness for millennia, appearing in great works of art and literature. For instance, the Pegasus motif in the Mobilgas logo originates from Greek mythology, emblematic of fame and artistic inspiration, while the Apple logo recalls the Biblical symbol of original sin and temptation. The inclusion of the Apple advertisement in this series was no coincidence: less than a year prior to conceiving the series, Warhol had encountered a young Steve Jobs in Yoko Ono's New York apartment. This exchange between two of the most famous innovators of twentieth century culture was captured in Warhol's diaries:
'[Jobs] gave me a lesson on drawing with [the Apple computer] … I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who'd helped invent it.'
(Andy Warhol, diary entry for Tuesday 9 October 1984).
The familiar faces featured in the Ads were also meaningful to Warhol as an extension of his earlier portraits of Hollywood icons. The figure of James Dean, who died at the age of 24, embodies the twin themes of fame and tragedy in Warhol's oeuvre, while the inclusion of the Blackglama advertising campaign reflects the artist's lifelong reverence for Judy Garland. Her performance as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz made an impression on the young Warhol, who would write fan letters to the actress. The original black and white source image marries the allure of the luxury ad campaigns of the 1960s with the romance of the 'Golden Age of Hollywood'. Warhol injects this nostalgic image with colour and life in a similar manner to the technicolour revolution of The Wizard of Oz. The process of reinvigorating a black and white image with colour can be likened to Dorothy's journey from the mundane yet comforting landscape of Kansas to the highly saturated Land of Oz and the dazzling Emerald City. After becoming acquainted with Garland as an adult and befriending her daughter Liza Minnelli, Warhol described her as 'the greatest actress you could imagine every second of her life.'
The inclusion of the Paramount logo in Ads not only reflected Warhol's love of cinema but also held deep personal significance. His partner of five years, Jon Gould, was an executive at Paramount Pictures and there are many references to their relationship in the artist's diaries. Gould died of AIDS in 1986 at the age of 33, just months before Warhol's own untimely death. Cataloguing moments in Warhol's own life while simultaneously reflecting twentieth century history, the Ads are a kind of personal and cultural time capsule, foreshadowing the exponential growth of some of the world's biggest brands. Through these works, Warhol elevated magazine advertisements, transforming them into vibrant, captivating works of art. In doing so, he blurred the line between commercial design and fine art more directly than at any point in his career. The Ads series captures Warhol's seismic contribution to art history: he tied art to popular culture, commerce and capitalism to reflect a collective Western consciousness more truthfully than any other artist had before.
